It’s not all bad news at Bonn – with low carbon precincts, living infrastructure and urban networks, cities are leading the charge against climate change.
Children march at the welcoming ceremony of the Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany.
(UNclimatechange/flickr)
As delegates meet in Bonn for the latest rounds of climate talks, civil society, NGOs, cities, regional governments and businesses, are stepping up to work together toward climate goals.
Transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases by sector. Converting the U.S. fleet to cleaner electric vehicles would likely take decades.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
What if the world really got serious about meeting global climate goals? Doing the math on current emissions and the pace of energy transitions shows how quickly fossil fuels need to be phased out.
COP 22 President Salaheddine Mezouar from Morocco, right, hands over a gavel to Fiji’s prime minister and president of COP 23 Frank Bainimarama, left, during the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, Monday, Nov. 6, 2017.
AP Photo/Martin Meissner
Although climate change threatens the world’s small island nations, many can find ways to adapt and preserve their homes and cultures – especially if wealthy countries cut emissions and provide support.
Climate fight: a traditional Fijian warrior poses at the UN climate summit in Bonn.
Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
To many people, island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands are synonymous with climate catastrophe. But prophesies of doom aren’t all that helpful.
Line K Bay, Australian Institute of Marine Science; Andrew Heyward, Australian Institute of Marine Science, dan Andrew Negri, Australian Institute of Marine Science
Every year buoyant bundles rise from a spawning coral, giving the impression of an upside-down snowstorm.
The Paris climate agreement aims to limit global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels. We need to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but we can also make gains with carbon farming.
We need to look behind the sharing economy’s apparently informal, casual intent to consider the impacts on people’s lives.
Montri Nipitvittaya/Shutterstock
In cities dominated by globalised market forces, how can we achieve social equity and justice? For any sharing economy idea, we need to ask what will it do to fix the big problems confronting us all.
Flooding in Port Arthur, Texas during Hurricane Harvey, Aug. 31, 2017. According to the Climate Science Special Report released on Nov. 2, heavy precipitation events are becoming more frequent and intense in most regions of the world.
SC National Guard
On Nov. 2 the White House posted a detailed climate science report without comment. The Trump administration is unlikely to heed it, but it could boost state, local and private sector action.
Oilsands workers, hard hit by the oil price slump, are being retrained in renewables by Iron & Earth.
(David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca)
This year is poised to go down as the hottest non-El Niño year ever recorded, with record low polar ice and extreme weather that left many regions battling bushfires and hurricanes.
The disaster narrative is counterproductive.
Shutterstock
Many countries around the world are vulnerable to wildfires, but a fire engineer warns that most are not spending enough on research into how fires spread and ways to reduce risks.
Sunrise over the Earth. Hydrofluorocarbons were created to protect the ozone layer, but their stable nature makes them an extremely potent greenhouse gas.
NASA
Australia has ratified an agreement to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a manmade compound once hailed as the saviour of the ozone layer. What went wrong?
Cars are submerged on a flooded road in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville in 2012.
Alex Holver/NixPages
A massive residential development in a flood-prone inner-city suburb sounds like a recipe for disaster. But good urban design can deliver higher density and reduce the flood risk.